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Photo: Gil Yochanan
Knesset Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee Chairman Tzachi Hanegbi
Photo: Gil Yochanan

Hanegbi: Pullout prompted Lebanon war

Chairman of Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee tells Israel Radio that disengagement was 'a mistake'

Disengagement opponents come out of the closet: Only days after an IDF general caused uproar by saying the disengagement from the Gaza Strip was "suicide" for Israel, the Chairman of the Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee Tzachi Hanegbi said on Thursday that the move "was interpreted as weakness and this weakness prompted attacks in Gaza and along the northern border."

 

"The disengagement neither contributed to the security (of Israel) nor to peace," Hanegbi said in an interview broadcast on Israel Radio.

 

"But on the political level it is impossible to ignore its contribution," he added.

 

Hanegbi acknowledged that while evacuating Jewish settlers from Sinai in the early eighties in return for peace with Egypt was a successful move, the eviction of 9,000 settlers from Gaza in August 2005 was a mistake because it brought about a rise in terror attacks.

 

"In Gaza that wasn't the case and I could understand both the stiff objection (to the disengagement) and my feeling that this is not worth the effort," he told the radio.

 

On Wednesday, Major General Yiftah Ron-Tal told a religious publication that the disengagement was "suicide" for Israel, prompting Chief of Staff Lit.-Gen. Dan Halutz to dismiss him.

 

"The disengagement didn't prove its worthiness in many ways. I mean in terms of they had hoped it would bring, that it would sober up the other side, that it would bring a kind of an emotional prelude where by the Palestinian would want to speak to us, and we saw reversed results," he said.

 

"The disengagement was interpreted as weakness which prompted an offensive, and this offensive came to our midst in Gaza … and along the northern border," he said.

 

Hanegbi acknowledged that the disengagement gave former prime minister Ariel Sharon enough political leverage to adopt a tough policy towards the Palestinians, "including many targeted assassinations and this because of the disengagement."

 


פרסום ראשון: 10.05.06, 14:56
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